Video Editors: Abhishek Sharma and Ashutosh Bhardwaj
A day after a clip of industrialist Rahul Bajaj criticising the government in the presence of Home Minister Amit Shah went viral, a bevy of Union Cabinet ministers and other BJP functionaries retorted, claiming his concerns were unfounded.
Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman tweeted saying that questions and criticisms were answered, and that it is better to seek them rather than “spreading one’s own impressions” which “can hurt national interest”.
Commerce and Railway Minister Piyush Goyal, who was also present at the event where Bajaj expressed his “fear”, tweeted Shah’s response where he claims that the veteran industrialist’s question itself proves that people are not afraid.
Yet another Cabinet minister, Hardeep Singh Puri, toed Goyal’s line in asserting that the fact that Bajaj could “stand up to Amit Shah’s face” is evidence that “democratic values are alive & flourishing in India”.
The most aggressive counter, however, came from BJP’s IT Cell Head Amit Malviya who fished out old clippings of Bajaj praising Rahul Gandhi to suggest that his “political affiliations” lie with the Congress.
“Industrialists who flourished in the license raj will always be beholden to the Congress,” he said in another tweet, carrying the same clip.
He also tweeted a portion of typed text, claiming it was from an IIM-Ahmedabad case study, which suggests that Bajaj "used his ministerial contacts" to manipulate a deal involving the erstwhile two-wheeler maker Scooters India.
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